The Taliban murdered innocent aid workers in Pakistan because of a paranoid
conspiracy theory about polio vaccine

Pakistan’s Islamist radicals are willing to kill teenage girls for going to school, or cast acid in the faces of their teachers. The murder of seven local aid workers on New Year’s Day shows that vaccinating children against polio has entered their litany of capital crimes. Even by the depraved standards of the Pakistani Taliban and its allies, the cold-blooded execution of these innocent people – six of them women – was a profoundly wicked act.

If anyone believes that conspiracy theories are harmless fantasies, consider why this outrage took place. The Taliban and its friends think that polio vaccines are a Western plot designed to make Muslims infertile – or perhaps give them Aids. This peculiarly paranoid conspiracy theory, which tends to vary with the teller, has taken hold in areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan and northern Nigeria. Consequently, these countries are the only places where polio remains endemic.

Humanity is quite capable of eradicating polio, just as smallpox was wiped out by 1979. Last year, Britain contributed £25 million to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. All that stands in the way is medieval suspicion of the two drops that protect a child.

Some might object that the CIA fanned the flames by using a hepatitis vaccination programme to cover its surveillance of Osama bin Laden in 2011. But the polio conspiracy theory has been around for years: in 2003, all immunisations were suspended in three Nigerian states, causing a new outbreak.

There should be no tolerance for the obscurantist bigotry that allows polio to survive. Anyone who entertains conspiracy theories is helping to create the climate for this evil to persist. After all, campaigning against polio vaccinations is the same as campaigning in favour of crippling children.